Cambridge expert says India vital for world growth

Updated on: Thursday, November 18, 2010

India's economic growth despite many challenges means that "there must be hope for all countries of the world", according to a prominent Indian-origin economist at the University of Cambridge.
Professor Ajit Singh, an Emeritus Professor at the university, has recently been given the Glory of India Award for "individual excellence, excellent performance and outstanding contribution for the progress of the nation and worldwide."

Speaking after the award, Singh said: "The Indian case is particularly helpful to the rest of the world - if a undisciplined, chaotic and imperfectly democratic country can do so well as it has been doing, growing at ten percent a year for twenty years, then there must be hope for all countries of the world."

Singh graduated from Punjab University and obtained his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. He began teaching economics at Cambridge in 1965.

Singh said: "Sixty years ago, two men from the third world came to the fore. These were Mao Zedong, a great leader of the Chinese people who wanted China to rise again and be a model Communist State, and Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted India to also rise but his dream was that of a mixed economy with democracy".

He added: "Sixty years later, it seems China is ahead but it is too early to judge who will eventually win the race. The breathtaking economic progress of China and India since their independence from colonial rule is the inspiring story of the last three decades, and long may it continue".

Singh has been a senior economic adviser to the governments of Mexico and Tanzania and a consultant to various UN developmental organisations, including the World Bank, the ILO, UNCTAD and UNIDO.

During his Economics career in Cambridge, Singh has published several books and monographs as well as nearly 200 research papers, including 90 in refereed economic journals.

Singh has recently been appointed to the Tun Ismail Ali Chair at the University of Malaya.

The Chair is funded by the Central Bank of Malaysia and is named after the first Malay Governor of the Central Bank in recognition of his services to the young nation.

The Chair's chief objective is to enhance academic excellence in the area of international financial economics not only at universities but also through public lectures and other means in the wider community of policy makers and government officials.

Cambridge expert says India vital for world growth

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